- Once you get on that path, to me, you can never go back.
Life will be boring if you back.
You'll feel like, "I'm still believin' in Santa Clause."
To my kids, Santa does exist.
Just wanna let you know, it's was a joke.
[upbeat music]
Hey what's up GQ Sports?
I'm Tony Gonzalez, NFL Hall of Famer.
And these are my essentials.
[upbeat music]
Everything begins with sleep.
The research I've done, it's pretty much a no brainer to me.
What's more important than your nutrition?
What's more important than workin' out?
It begins with gettin' a good night's sleep.
And gettin' the best quality sleep you can.
And so these essential items that I have here
are what helps me get the best sleep.
I'll start with this one.
It's basically white noise, but good white noise.
Me and my wife, we can't sleep without this now.
I bring it on the road with me to hotels.
And it kinda creates that same environment too,
when you're in a hotel, now you feel like you're back home
because of the noise machine.
I love a sleep mask,
havin' total darkness is essential for good sleep,
you know, cuttin' that light out of your eyes.
I have an app on my phone that will track my sleep
and tell me how good I slept, how many times I woke up,
how many times I was movin' around.
And the Oura Ring too, also measures that.
All this stuff is designed to get you to wake up
and feel great.
The Perfect Pushup device, and so it moves like that.
And the reason I use these, some people are like,
"Why don't you just use your hands?
"You can push up without anything,"
but for me, I have stiff wrists.
And this moves so it's just a little bit
easier on your joints.
And along with my other workout,
I'll get 30 to 40 pushups per morning.
It's kinda the first thing I do.
It gets the blood moving.
I do a quick stretch, and then I hit my pushups.
You would be amazed, if you just do 40 pushups a day.
You look up and you're like, "Man, I'm in great shape."
People are like, "Man, are you workin' out?"
Yeah, for about a minute a day, that's it.
[upbeat music]
The reason I'm sittin' here is because of reading.
It changed my life.
My second year in the league, real quick,
led the NFL and dropped passes, went through a depression.
My brother recommended, he actually gave me
a book of quotes by Vince Lombardi.
Off of that, I went out and bought his book.
I never bought a book before that and ever since that,
I've just developed this passion for reading.
I don't care what you read,
as long as you're reading something
'cause when you read somethin', you're learning somethin'.
And with your five hours of time,
you're getting somebody's expertise,
who spent a lifetime trying to be the best athlete,
or the best coach.
They poured all their information into a book
and now I get to read it.
Then when I do read it, it's, I have my pen in here.
It's underlying everything.
And I'll go back and not reread this book,
but I'll go back and look through it.
And that way it becomes part of you
because I don't believe, you read it one time,
you learn it for like a couple of weeks,
and then you're back to your old self.
But if you keep reiterating it,
put it somewhere that you're
actually gonna sit down and look it,
I'd recommend the bathroom [laughing]
when you go in there and take care of your business,
just have this book sittin' right there
and just go through instead of gettin' on your phone
and playin' video games
or lookin' up your social media account,
just get in there and get better.
You've got everything out,
and then you brought some stuff in,
so it's a good scenario as far as I'm concerned.
The other side to it is journaling.
After you start reading,
if you wanna take your reading one step further,
then the stuff that you really loved in the book
you can start writing down.
And then you start writing down
your own personal thoughts, okay?
What did I think about that chapter?
Or you know what, this is a way that I can write it now,
notes to myself, you write your own little playbook
to tell you what to do, so when you get on the field,
you can have success, it's the same thing for life.
I have about six of 'em now that I've filled up
and I just keep goin'.
I can look back at the notes that I wrote to myself
and see how I've evolved, see how I've gotten better.
I would have stayed the same.
Once you get on that path, to me, you can never go back.
Life will be boring if you go back.
You'll feel like, I'm still believin' in Santa Claus.
It's you just keep evolving.
You know what, actually to my kids, Santa does exist.
Just wanted to let you know, it was a joke.
[upbeat music]
Okay, this right here, now stay with me now.
It's a little weird and a lot of people out there
are gonna say, "What the hell, hippy stuff,"
but this is a grounding mat.
In today's day and age, we have shoes, synthetic soles.
And we're always cutoff from the Earth.
The Earth is electric, okay?
Science proved it, your body's electric.
You put off an electrical impulse.
This is all proven stuff.
And so, we evolved as human beings.
We've never been disconnected.
We were always walkin' around, you have barefoot,
or you have natural soles on your shoes
that doesn't cut you off from the Earth's electrical pulse.
When you go out into the woods, or you get dirty down,
you see little kids always playing in dirt, and soil,
and all that stuff, that's when you feel your best.
That's when you feel connected.
But if you don't have time to go to the park,
you can actually just sit there and read a book,
or watch TV, or whatever it is, get on your computer.
And you put this down, you plug this into an outlet,
a grounded outlet, which is usually the ones with the,
you look at the plugin.
- [Interviewer] It's the third prong.
- It's the third prong, you plug it in there,
'cause that means it's grounded, I guess.
So yeah, it grounds you and you just sit there.
Just have your feet, barefoot, and you watch TV.
And I did this last night.
I had my highest sleep score that I've had in a long time.
[upbeat music]
These are headphones.
Very colorful ones too, it's the only color they had left.
But I figured it made sense, being a Falcon and a Chief so,
it was good.
First of all, I travel a lot, so when I'm on a plane,
I wanna listen to my music, listen to podcast.
I'm a big podcast guy,
I have my own podcast called "Wide Open."
I like to play it back, hear how I sounded.
Hear from the guests 'cause when you're doin' the interview,
a lot of the times, you're absolutely listenin',
and I'm tryin' to stay as present as I can.
But at the same time, I'm doin' an interview.
So I gotta think about my questions.
But when you can play it back,
I can just listen to it so it gives me a good time
just to listen to it fully and engage what I just learned.
I will sit on my little grounding mat,
put my headphones on, listen to some guided meditations,
listen to some podcast, and this is an absolute essential.
[upbeat music]
So I travel a lot.
This is obviously a suitcase.
This is a Briggs and Riley, amazing suitcase.
And this is a great one because,
first of all you can get it up.
It has this contractable component.
That's as high as it goes, so it gives you a deep,
so if you gotta, you know,
three or four nights this is great for.
But then for the one-nighters,
you can just [crunching] compress it down like that.
I feel like an infomercial.
And then it rolls.
It's got this technology, whatever it is.
This is not a cheap bag, either.
I mean, but it's worth every penny.
[upbeat music]
Well, I have this underneath, you guys couldn't see this,
it was there the whole time.
But I make this little mix every day.
And I put tumeric in it.
I'll put macha, I'll put cocoa powder.
I'll do all these different, just like little concoctions.
I'll put cinnamon in there
and I make my own little mix in a little baggie.
I bring it with me when I travel on the road.
I have to make enough for like three or four days.
It's kinda like my morning coffee, along with coffee too.
I put a little coffee in there, I put lime.
Mushrooms are great, like reishi mushrooms,
cordyceps, lion's mane, turkey tail, all that stuff.
There's blended mixes out there.
You can just put it on there so you don't have to do all,
you know, least amount of work as possible.
If I'm lookin' for a quick brain, you know,
amplifier to get me goin',
maybe before a show I'll take a little of this,
what's called Brain Juice, this is great.
This is CBD oil.
On top of how you eat, and how you workout,
and how you meditate,
and how you take care of yourself spiritually,
mind, body, and spirit, this is kind of the circle.
Kind of another part of the circle of health,
as far as I'm concerned.
Keep ya goin' and optimum.